SDCC 07: Contra 4 Hands-on

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Somewhere out there is the beast, and he's hungry tonight.

By Greg Miller

Contra, you're a cold-blooded bitch.

Don't get us wrong, we love you to death, but everyone has know for years that you're a franchise that demands perfection out of its players -- jump here, shoot there and dodge that spray of bullets. You boast one of those difficulty levels that continually crushes the hopes of gamers, but we keep coming back with open arms.

Although it's the same level we saw at E3, IGN got some more hands-on time with the sequel to the Super Nintendo title from years ago today at Comic-Con and felt like giving a rundown of what the introduction is all about.

In general, it's pain.

Your blue pants-wearin', red bandana-rockin' hero is dropped from a helicopter at the beginning of the level and lands in a jungle lagoon. With a serene mountain landscape behind him rising into the second screen and green foliage on each shore, our hero climbs out of the muck and goes on to attack the baddies.

The controls for this literal and figurative blast are easy enough to get the hang of. The Y button fires, the B button jumps, A discards your weapon and X is your grappling hook -- there are more than a few times when you'll need to zip to the top screen and continue the fight. Once you've shot down one of those floating enemies that pack a new weapon, the left shoulder button will switch between your guns.

From the get go, Contra 4 reminds you it's here to kick your ass. Once you move the 2D side-scroller just a bit to the right, you have hordes of red-and-silver clad enemies coming at you on three separate levels. Your first instinct is to press up and right on the D-Pad to take out the sniper on the high ground, but there's just too much going on for you to simply walk in there and shoot with any accuracy. You'll have to take out the enemies while jumping from platform to platform and dodging heavy fire.

As you advance, you'll get to know your surroundings by experimentation. That reddish lump on one of the lower levels might look like it's part of the rock walkway you're crossing, but it's really an enemy solider with a sandbag fort in front of him. We found that one out after literally running into the bad guy &#Array; about five times.

Remember those bridges that would explode for no reason in the original Contra? There's still blowing-up bridges in this version of the game, but now, you'll see a limber bad guy leap from below, attach the explosive and let the ensuing boom take his life.

There are shooters in towers, grenade-hurling goons and one badass rail-suspended cannon car that will obliterate the ground below it as you try to take it out. Succeed at beating the pilot of the cannon car, however, and you'll have the chance to use your grappling hook to get into the monster and lay waste to the enemies foolish enough to hang out below the behemoth.

Our level-one demo ended with us facing off against the familiar Contra wall, but after we beat the lower portion, the thing grew as tall as the second screen. We had to destroy the penthouse by latching onto a hovering helicopter and firing on the structure.

Toss all this in with the traditional Contra weapons such as machine guns, spread shot and lasers along with the ability to rock double versions of each gun, and it looks like you might be damning this title to hell in the familiar love/hate way.